Nah. For most practical purposes, soul could *be* personality. (Only when one ventures into religious discussion, does a possibility of perceiving the concepts with much difference arise.)

Still, I must make one reservation. One must probably admit... that personality is often (and perhaps heavily) influenced by having a body.

For creatures like us, whose cognitive process is entirely analog, and heavily influenced by whatever occurs with our body... a hypothetical "personality without body" might feel very strange... or very unconfortable indeed. Missing a body... might be "phantom limb syndrome" to the power of ten, and quite maddening.

This is my partial speculation... regarding why the alleged souls... don't like the hunter. Not only did the fellow grab sentient mindstates without consent... but he isn't providing them freedom to operate, or even decent emulator software.

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As contrast with humanoids... a stored "soul" of an AI might not only feel decent without a body... but being a presumably flexible handler of information, it might easily revive itself (or if storage was imperfect, then preserved parts of itself).

Assuming for example a Soul Hunter being involved... an AI might employ a careless communication session to deliver part of itself outside a Soul Hunter's container, into an inhabitable computer system... and using that part, proceed to extract the rest of itself... into quite functional state.

(And speculating really far... a massively advanced AI placed into a difficult plight... might even get offensive, considering a Soul Hunter brain an inhabitable system... and craft some mental construct, some weaponized meme... to infect and exploit that system's resources for its own rescue.)

Then again, chances are that Soul Hunters don't capture any AI not willing to be captured... since that kind seems unlikely to die easily... and when they do, can be expected to either be directing their own retreat from existence... or go faster than a Soul Hunter can say "oops".

It suddenly occurs to me that the Soul Hunter may simply have a more sophisticated (or at least different) version of the personality capture that Kosh used on Talia. Or at least it's implied that Kosh did something with Talia's dominant personality.

As to how that's possible -- well, in the B5 universe, they can erase/create personalities more or less on command. How? Don't ask me... same way that ships get into hyperspace. Magic. Or at least it's magic to our eyes, a la the magic of the technomages....

So, Fas, the idea that souls exist may be ridiculous -- but there are plenty of other explanations within the B5 universe for what it was that Sinclair saw.

I chose to grade the ep in relation to TV scifi as a whole, so I gave it a B. If I were to reset the scale for JMS, it would be a bit lower, but I did like the ep and Morgan Sheppard's performance. He seemed at once fixated, and detached. One thing I have never seen mentioned, is that JMS seems to have drawn inspiration for the character from the Marvel Comics character Adam Warlock. Warlock had a "soul gem" in the center of his forehead, that could suck out souls, preserving their consciousness.

We know that people can interpret "mundane" events as religious experiences. Imagine a technology so advanced in the face of people prone to "spiritual" interpretation.

We don't know the origins or history of soul hunters. We don't know what came first, their spiritual beliefs or their technology, or if they're related, or whatnot.

Alternative, logical explanations for religious phenomena is a constant theme throughout the series. The biggest example is the very basis of Minbari religion, based on "prophecies" of a dude the just went back in time. Even the Centauri "prophecies" and dreaming of their own deaths have possible logical explanations.

Now let's say Franklin's explanation was true. Imagine your intellect and memory were ripped out of your body and preserved, and you're this weird tihng in a ball. If you felt you were ripped out early, wouldn't you be pissed? Sure would explain how they charged the wacko Soul Hunter. The whole deal with that guy was that he was soul-collecting too early, fearing a repeat of the Dukat situation.

One thing we never really learn (unless it was in the movie River of Souls, which I haven't watched in ages) is if the other soul-balls are happy with where they are. Maybe the ones kept by the "sane" soul hunters are glad that they're somehow preserved.

The interesting thing about a soul is that it's not a clearly defined concept, like god. Everyone kind of has their own definition of it. In a very real sense, Franklin's and Delenn's perception of what the soul hunters do is actually the same- not allowing the natural act of death take its course. The only difference is that Delenn believes that it tangibly and directly removes from the "soul pool." This premise is true if you define the soul as the collection of thoughts, memories, and personality of an individual. If, however, you think of the soul as some ghostly thing inhabiting a body that literally travels up and down and is reborn, that's a different story.

The god analogy I made is that some people think of god as the collection of everything in the universe, known and unkown, fate, luck, "destiny," etc, while some think of him as a specific being of his own with wants or needs or laws. The former is more similar to an atheist than they realise.

Remember- B5 keeps things open, so no, you can't say for sure that in the B5 universe souls exist and that's a fact. We just don't know enough, and we haven't even defined "soul." This is to be expected from the personal brainchild of an atheist sympathetic to and respectful of religion.

As for Sheppard's acting, I think it's pretty ballsy, but annoying (especially the chanting). Just think of what he had to portray: a truly alien creature, part of some weird cult of people who travel around the galaxy collecting souls(!). You can't expect them to act human (my big criticism of Martin Sheen in River of Souls). Now add losen a screw of this dude's mental makeup and a twisted guilt complex and all bets are off.

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"When you have reached the end of the road then you can decide whether to go to the left or the right, to fire or to water. If you make those decisions before you have even set foot upon the road it will take you nowhere." - Galen

A whole race didn't died, but transformed into something else and the soul-hunters had no clue that the race didn't just die out. I don't think they are as wise as you give them credit for here.

Perhaps the Soul Hunters were all tied up in trying to find a way to free that race which they had mistakenly captured. Maybe they are out of the scene for awhile.

Yeah but that event referenced in TROS occurs way before Sheridan is taken.

Even if they haven't figured out how to make amends for their mistake back then... they are at least aware at this point (thanks to events in TROS) that they made one... and perhaps were a bit more cautious about what they were doing.

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We live for The One, we die for The One

"We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."